David Emery OnlineIs the web really dead?
Without commenting on the article's argument, I nonetheless found this graph immediately suspect, because it doesn't account for the increase in internet traffic over the same period. The use of proportion of the total as the vertical axis instead of the actual total is a interesting editorial choice.
As you may have read elsewhere, Wired are currently running a ‘The Web Is Dead’ story in a fairly shameless attempt to get traffic (spot the irony). The key basis to their hypothesis is a graph of the split in overall internet traffic between web, video (which apparently includes YouTube, even though that’s a web site…), peer to peer traffic etc. However, as this Boing Boing post so clearly demonstrates, it’s an incredibly misleading graph as it doesn’t account for the fact that internet traffic as a whole has massively increased over the time period they’re graphing.
In other words, Wired are lying with graphics, and it’s pretty shameful and shameless.
Visit ➔Introducing BBC Dimensions
What’s a Dimension then? Well, basically what it says right there on the homepage: “Dimensions takes important places, events and things, and overlays them onto a map of where you are.”
More brilliant work from the BERG team.
Visit ➔Arcade Fire's Synchronised Artwork
Morisset has worked with designer Caroline Robert to create a digital artwork that appears when the album is played on mp3 players like the iPod or iPhone. The work deliberately echoes the pleasures of old vinyl record sleeves, where the song lyrics were often written out in full. Each track on the album has an individual image that appears on the iPod screen when it is played, with the lyrics of the song then appearing on the screen as they are sung.
Well this is very clever – you’ve been able to embed time-specific artwork in AAC tracks for ever (and is used a lot in podcasts) but I’ve never seen anyone do anything interesting with it before.
Visit ➔Sleigh-ed In Flame
...But actually this is one of the most forward-looking electro-guitar pop albums of the year (by turns it mixes Atari Teenage Riot with MIA, the Mary Chain and industrial hip-hop beats). It seems to constantly push you to the edge of your senses and then reels you back in. It wants to give you a headache and then sooth your brow.
I love the Sleigh Bells album – got to be not only the best debut of the year so far but one of the best albums of 2010 full stop.
Visit ➔I think iTunes is done.
I hated the media-creep of iTunes from the start. A dedicated ‘QuickTime Video Library’ would’ve been my preferred solution for Movies and TV shows, a rebuild of iSync to handle MobileMe and iPhone synchronization settings, and a standalone iTunes Store app (or, frankly, web site) for media purchases.
I have a real love/hate relationship with iTunes; I love the fact it has all my music in, and the power of smart playlists and the useful features it’s accumulated over the years, but simultaneously rue the fact it’s undoubtably the worst designed application Apple have.
I think it’s quite interesting that on iOS the functions iTunes does on the Mac are split out into 3 different apps (or 4 on the iPod/iPad with the Movies app) – “iPod” for media playback and organisation, “iTunes” for purchasing media and “App Store” for apps. I’d quite like to see something similar on the desktop, with the Finder handling syncing devices (don’t really need a separate app for that I don’t think).
Visit ➔I believe in WikiLeaks.
I wonder what it’s like to be 14, to be watching this unfold and have Wikileaks as the base of certain assumptions you will make about media, news, government and information for the rest of your life.
I am proud to live in a world where this is possible.
WikiLeaks defines the effect the internet has on the world; information cannot be controlled anymore (once more then a small handful possesses it), and you just have to deal with it.
As Anthony says, WikiLeaks is like Napster, but for governments.
Visit ➔Creating Digital Magazines
As mentioned, Adobe InDesign CS5 software is the central component of the workflow. Using InDesign CS5, design teams create layouts and add interactivity. With layouts in hand, production teams package the assets using the new Digital Content Bundler utility that allows publishers to import vertical and horizontal InDesign CS5 layouts, add metadata, (article title & description, issue number, etc.) and export them into a new “.issue” format.
I’m quite torn on this development from Adobe, which – when it’s finally released – will allow (relatively) easy eMagazine publishing, in the style of the Wired app, from InDesign. On the one hand easy publishing = a good thing, and I love the focus on design that this workflow provides. On the other, surely this stuff should be done in HTML?
Visit ➔It’s As If Apple Has Hired Don Draper
Watching Apple’s iPhone 4 FaceTime commercial again, it reminds me of something: Mad Men. The television show is starting its fourth season in a couple of weeks, but the commercial takes me back to the end of season one — an episode called “The Wheel.” I’ve actually talked about this episode before because it contains a scene that is perhaps the best in the entire series. In it, ad man Don Draper gives a presentation to Kodak showing why Sterling Cooper should be handling the account for their new picture projector.
I really like the FaceTime ad for the new iPhone; yes, it borders on (well, cannonballs straight into) over-sentimentality, but it’s an ad that actually makes you feel something and you can’t say that very often.
It feels old school, timeless, in way quite reminiscent to what Pixar achieve with their films.
If you haven’t seen it:
Visit ➔Supersize that Background, Please!
These are exciting times for web developers, with all the browser makers working hard to implement upcoming technologies like HTML5 and CSS3. As a result, it’s time to start revisiting old techniques to see how the same things can be done in smarter, cleaner ways.
An interesting hybrid of techniques I’ve used for the large header images on this site – this latest version uses the CSS3 background-size property to scale it appropriately. Previous versions used javacript to switch different sized images in and out depending on how big the image was, and using media queries to do the same is pretty nifty, however I dropped it for this version as it turned out most people were ending up with the same size image anyway (as the majority of visitors had similar browser window size) and the file size savings weren’t that great.
Visit ➔BBC News website redesign
We have focused on design and navigation, looking to see how we can make all the existing content we produce each day easier for you to find, use and share.
It’s obviously a bit premature to judge a website from static screenshots, but this is looking very nice.
Visit ➔